The first story, from the island of Crete, entitled “New Tunes,” was published by Politis, who considered it to be part of the legendary cycles connected with Alexander the Great.2 The mermaid here is Alexander’s forever-living desperate sister, while other motifs, such as the Cyanean Rocks, the water of immortality, or the fairies teaching music to humans, recall either Greek mythology or modern Greek traditions.
The second story, “The Mermaid,” is an oral tale recorded in the local idiom of the island of Skiathos during the first half of the twentieth century. It is part of the considerable Greek corpus of tales that, like “The Nixie in the Pond,” involve a miraculously born child who is promised to some (aquatic) demon; having reached puberty, the youth in this story has to overcome the demon’s powers in order to save his own life.
—MARILENA PAPACHRISTOPHOROU, University of Ioannina, Greece
New Tunes1
King Alexander, having fought and conquered all kingdoms on Earth and having the whole world in fear of him, summoned the magicians and asked them, “Tell me, you who know what’s written in destiny, what can I do to live many years and enjoy the world which I have made entirely my own?” “Venerable King, your power is great,” replied the magicians, “but what is written in destiny cannot be unwritten. There is only one thing that can make you enjoy your realms and your glory and become immortal, and live as long as the mountains. But it is difficult, too difficult.” “I am not asking you whether it’s difficult or not, but only what it is,” said Alexander. “Then, if you please, my King, it’s the water of immortality; if you drink it, you will have no fear of death. But if you are to reach it, you must cross two mountains that constantly clash against each other and not even a flying bird has time to pass through. Countless famous young princes and noblemen have perished at that formidable trap! If you make it past the mountains, there is a never-sleeping dragon who guards the water of immortality. You kill the dragon and take it.”
At once Alexander sends for his horse, Bucephalus, that had no wings but flew like a bird.2 He mounts his steed and goes. With a single flick of his whip he crossed the passage; he killed the sleepless dragon and took the glass jar with the water of immortality.
But when the blessed king reached the palace he failed to keep the water safe! His sister saw it, and unaware of what it was she threw it out. By chance the water fell on a wild onion, which is why these plants never wilt.
After a while Alexander sought to drink the water of immortality but couldn’t find it. He asked his sister, and she told him that she didn’t know what it was and had poured it out. The king was beside himself with anger and frustration, and cursed her to become a fish from the waist down and forever be tormented, as long as the world stands, in the middle of the sea.
God heard this, and since then the ships that travel see her wandering in the waves. Still, she has no hatred for Alexander, and when she spots a ship she asks, “Is Alexander alive?” If the captain is uninformed and replies, “He is dead,” the maiden in her sorrow starts beating the sea with her arms and her unbraided blond hair, and sinks the ship. But those in the know reply, “He lives and reigns,” and then the wretched maiden, reassured, happily sings sweet songs.
That’s where sailors learn new tunes and bring them to the world.
The Mermaid1
Narrated by Athanassios K. Trakosas, age seventy.
Once upon a time, there was a couple who had no children. They were very sad about it. The man was a captain with his own ship. He traveled a lot. Once, on a journey, he and his crew were sailing past a headland. They had a tailwind and were traveling just fine. Suddenly, the ship stopped dead, not moving an inch. They looked this way and that to see why the ship wouldn’t move, if they had hit a shoal or anything, but couldn’t see anything.
The captain looks down the prow and sees a Mermaid in the sea, with one arm against the bow of the ship to stop it from moving.2 A Mermaid is a woman from the waist up and a fish from the waist down. The captain says to her, “What wrong did we do to you that you won’t let us move on?” “You did nothing wrong,” says the Mermaid. “Only, I heard you don’t have a child, and I came to ask you: do you want to have a child? “I do,” said the captain. And the Mermaid says, “Take this bone and give it to your wife to eat, and she’ll get pregnant and you’ll have a boy. On this condition: when the child turns fifteen, you’ll bring him here to me. You’ll leave him out there on that headland, and I’ll come to fetch him.” “All right,” he said. The Mermaid dove into the sea and was gone. The ship moved again and continued on its journey.
Once the journey was over, the captain went home and gave the bone to his wife to eat. And then she got pregnant. The child was born, a handsome lad. He grew up and was baptized—Yannakis, they called him. Then they sent him to school, and he was very good at it. He was very clever.
The child grew. The more he grew, the greater his parent’s heartbreak, because they’d have to take him to the Mermaid and lose him. And then he turned fifteen. It was time to take him to the Mermaid. What else could the poor father do? He was about to leave on a journey, and took the child aboard to leave him where he had seen the Mermaid. They sailed off, and in a few days they reached that headland. Then the captain says, “Let’s go out on the boat to gather some limpets.” Three or four sailors got into the boat, along with the captain and the lad. They took along a barrel of water and a basket of rusks. “Why do we need the water and rusks?” asked the child. The father lied to him so that he wouldn’t get suspicious. “There is an old hermit who lives over here behind the headland, and we sailors have a habit of offering him something from the ship when we alight here, whatever we have on board.”
They disembarked, unloaded the water and the rusks, and scattered around the rocky beach to look for limpets. At one point, the lad went behind a rock and bent down to collect limpets. Then the others took the boat, returned to the ship, and sailed off. After a while, the child raised his head from his work, looked around, and saw no one. He called out to his father, the crew. . . . No one. He turned to look at the ship, and saw it far off in the distance, sailing away. The poor thing could not understand why his father had left him behind in that desolate place. It was getting dark, and the poor kid got up and started going up the mountain in search of that hermit his father had spoken about.
On the way, he comes across two ants fighting over a dead worm. He takes out his knife, cuts the worm in two, and shares it between the two ants. He puts his knife away and gets up to leave. The ants call him back, saying, “Don’t go. Open your mouth, and we’ll give you our powers,” they say. “What kind of powers do you have?” asks the boy. “Well, we have our own powers, too, you know.” The boy opens his mouth, and the first ant spits right into it. And so does the second ant. Then they say, “If you ever need to become little, you say, ‘A man I am, an ant let me be’; and if you want to go back to being a man, say, ‘An ant I am, a man let me be.’” “Fine,” said Yannakis as he got up and left.
On his way he comes across two eagles fighting over a carcass. “Hold it,” he says. “Why fight?” He takes out his knife, cuts the carcass in two, and gives a piece to each one of them. Then the two eagles say, “You shall have our powers.” “What powers do you have?” said Yannakis. “Open your mouth,” the eagles said. The boy opens his mouth, and first one, and then the other eagle spit into it, and then they tell him, “If you ever need to reach some place fast, say, ‘A man I am, an eagle let me be’; and if you want to go back to being a man, you say, ‘An eagle I am, a man let me be.’”
Yannakis gets up and goes on his way. After a while, he finds two lions fighting over a carcass. Yannakis takes out his knife again and shares the carcass between the two. Then the lions say, “Open your mouth,” they spit into it, and tell him, “If you ever need to be strong, say, ‘A man I am, a lion let me be’; and if you want to go back to being a man, you say ‘A lion I am, a man let me b
e.’” “Fine,” said Yannakis and got up to leave.
He walked and walked, went around the whole mountain, but found no monk, nothing. He walked back, the poor thing, and reached the beach where they’d been collecting limpets. He was hungry, too, so he took a rusk out of the basket, soaked it with water from the barrel, and sat on a rock to eat it. That’s when the Mermaid appeared in the sea. The boy was scared. She said, “Come down and pull me out.” The boy was afraid and didn’t want to go. “I can’t get close to the sea,” he said, “or I’ll fall down the rocks.” “Come,” she kept saying. And in order to trick him, she says, “Your father sent me to fetch you.” The boy goes down the rocks near her, and says, “A man I am, a lion let me be.” He becomes a lion, grabs the Mermaid by the throat, pulls her out of the water, and drops her, face up on the rocks. Then he says, “A lion I am, an eagle let me be.” He becomes an eagle, flies away, and lands in a distant place.
But as the Mermaid was on her back, she could see which way the eagle had flown. Once Yannakis was far from the sea, he became human again and went on his way.
As he was walking, he saw a bonfire in the distance. He headed toward it, but there was no one there. He warmed himself a little and left. Further on, there was a house. He walks in, and . . . what a sight! People with cut ears, cut noses, cut legs, cut fingers. “Why do you all have your ears cut, your noses cut, your legs cut, your fingers cut?” They say, “There is this princess down in the town, and she’s black. She wants us to get the milk to her while it’s still warm every morning, so that she can wash herself and whiten her complexion. But the town is far and we can’t do it, so she has our ears cut off, or our noses, legs, or fingers cut off.” Yannakis says, “Tomorrow, I’ll take the milk to her myself.”
At dawn, the shepherd milked the goats, poured the milk in a wooden bucket, and gave it to Yannakis. Yannakis took it, walked away, out of sight, and said, “A man I am, an eagle let me be.” He turns into an eagle, picks up the bucket with his talons, and takes off. When he got close to the princess’s palace, he landed and said, “An eagle I am, a man let me be.” Becoming a man, he picks up the bucket with his hands and takes it in to the princess. The milk was still frothing. “How come the milk is warm today?” says the princess. “How would I know?” he says. “I ran all the way and brought it warm.” “Make sure you’re the one who brings it tomorrow,” says the princess. “Fine, I will.” The princess emptied the milk and gave him back the bucket. He took it, walked out, and said again, “A man I am, an eagle let me be.” He turned into an eagle, picked up the bucket with his talons, and flew off. When he got close to the house, he said, “An eagle I am, a man let me be,” picked up the bucket with his hand, and walked in. “Why aren’t you maimed?” they asked him. “I am not maimed because I brought the milk warm to her.” Then the shepherd made Yannakis his son.
The next day dawned. Yannakis’s father milked the goats, poured the milk into the jug, and gave it to him to take to the princess. Yannakis took it, walked down the road, turned into an eagle, and got it to the princess warm again. From then on, it was Yannakis who took the milk to the princess every day. But every day she asked him how he managed to bring it warm to her. At first, Yannakis didn’t want to betray his secret, but little by little, she made him tell her the whole story about his ability to turn into an eagle, lion, and ant. The princess fell in love with Yannakis, and Yannakis with her.
At first they kept it a secret from her father, the king. Every night Yannakis turned into an eagle, landed outside the palace, and said, “An eagle I am, an ant let me be.” As an ant, he entered the princess’s room through a crack. Then again, he said, “An ant I am, a man let me be,” became a man, and spent the whole night with the princess. At dawn he would turn into an ant again and leave the room through the crack. That went on regularly.
After a time, another king sent to ask for the princess as a bride for his son, the prince. Her father tells her, “Prince So-and-So has asked for your hand.” But the princess said to her father, “It’s Yannakis I’ll have as a husband. I want no one else.” Her father didn’t like this, and said, “You, a princess, marry a shepherd?” But she was firm: “I love him, so I must marry him.” “If you do, I’ll disown you.” But when the king saw that he couldn’t change his daughter’s mind, he let her have Yannakis. He married them one night, built a hut for them, and sent them to live there.
The other king, the one who had asked for the princess in marriage for his son, took offense and declared war against her father. What could the princess’s father do? He began to prepare his own army for war. Those conscripted in the cavalry were told to go to the stables and get a horse and then go to the warehouses for their weapons. Yannakis was to be in the cavalry, so he went to the stable and chose a lame horse, then went to the warehouse and picked up a rusty sword, and then joined the cavalry. His father-in-law saw him and said, “Look at him, going to fight like this!”
When the two armies met, Yannakis dismounted and said, “A man I am, a lion let me be.” He turned into a lion, picked a sword, too, rushed into the enemy lines, and started cutting up his foes left and right, with both sword and teeth, without any pause. His wife, the princess, and her father, the king, were watching the battle from a hilltop. The king then realized how worthy Yannakis was and regretted not wanting him as a son-in-law. Before long, he had destroyed the whole army. Not one enemy was left. Then Yannakis said, “A lion I am, a man let me be.” He turned into a man, and since he was covered in blood, he went to the sea to wash it off. The Mermaid comes out, grabs Yannakis, and devours him. The princess saw all this from up high—she saw the Mermaid eat Yannakis and was devastated. She kept crying and wailing, no matter how much her father tried to console her.
The king, to put an end to her crying, found another soldier who looked the same as Yannakis and brought him to her as her husband. “This is not my husband. I saw with my own eyes my husband being eaten by the Mermaid. Father, just build me a crystal tower in the sea, and give me three golden apples.” Her father built the crystal tower in the sea for her, gave her three golden apples, and sent her in a boat to the tower.
Once she was in the tower, she started playing with the golden apples. Then the Mermaid comes up and says, “What do you need three apples for? Give one to me.” “I’ll give it to you if you let Yannakis, whom you swallowed, stick his head out of your mouth, down to his neck, so I can see him.” She gave the apple to the Mermaid, who ate it and then let Yannakis stick his head and neck out.
Then the princess started playing with the two apples. The Mermaid says again, “Give me one more apple.” “I will, if you let Yannakis out down to his waist, so that I can see him.” The Mermaid let Yannakis out to his waist; he was unconscious and didn’t know where he was. The Mermaid took the second apple from the princess and ate it.
Then, as the princess played with the one apple in her hands, the Mermaid says, “Give me that apple, too—what will you do with it?” “I will, if you let Yannakis out to stand on your mouth.” The Mermaid took the apple and let Yannakis out to stand on her mouth. The princess said, “Yannakis, remember the past.” Yannakis says, “A man I am, an eagle let me be.” At once, he became an eagle and flew away. The Mermaid was taken by surprise. While she was trying to see where Yannakis had gone, the princess jumped into the boat and went ashore. She went to meet Yannakis, whom she had thus won back from the Mermaid. They went back to her father’s palace and lived happily ever after.
MERFOLK FROM THE SOUTH OF ITALY
By the nineteenth century, mermaids in a narrative from Puglia—the heel of Italy, which in ancient times had been colonized by Greeks—had evolved from the Sirens of The Odyssey. Certainly, the hybrid beings of the Italian imagination sang celestial songs just like their ancient Greek predecessors, but unlike Homer’s bird women, these mermaids belonged in the water. Further south, in Sicily, merfolk such as Cola Pesce enjoyed swimming but, like humans, ha
d to hold their breath under water.
The first tale is drawn from a late nineteenth-century collection whose title translates as Superstitions, Prejudices and Traditions from the Land of Otranto, and it alludes to local beliefs in fairies, as well as mermaids. The collector, Giuseppe Gigli (1862–1921), ascribes its origins to the people of the coastal town of Taranto in Puglia who, according to him, believed that women with unhappy love stories became mermaids.1
The legend of “Cola Pisci” or “Cola Pesce” centers on a portentous being who was famous in Sicily for swimming like a fish, or, in many accounts, for being both human and piscine. (Aptly, his name consists of an abbreviated form of “Nicola,” the Italian version of “Nicholas,” plus the Sicilian or Italian word for fish.) In most versions, the king or queen orders Cola Pesce either to retrieve a precious object for them or to find out what lies under the sea to support the island. Cola Pesce complies, diving deeper and deeper even though it means risking his life, and eventually dies. The short version translated here is somewhat subversively open ended, leaving Cola Pesce’s fate unclear.
The second Sicilian tale, “The Sailor and the Mermaid of the Sea,” is in some ways the counterpart to “Cola Pesce”: here, too, a human asks too much of a hybrid sea being, but the scale of the drama is much more intimate, suggesting a love story gone awry. Both stories, however, call out the cruel disregard of humans who hold power over others, whether that power is political or emotional.2
A Mermaid’s Story1
She was a beautiful woman, around twenty-five, with hair and eyes as black as ink and skin as white as milk. Once when her husband, a seaman, was traveling in faraway regions and she was tempted by a handsome young nobleman, she gave in and was unfaithful.
The Penguin Book of Mermaids Page 8